Portable computing devices such as laptop computers, personal data assistants (PDAs), smart phones and the like are in common usage, many featuring data communications support, powerful processors, larger and more colorful displays, and wireless networking and internet browsing capabilities. These advances in mobile technology have resulted in a dramatic increase in the volume of data communicated on wireless networks. These advances, coupled with subscribers seeking expanded mobility, drive subscribers to install and run data-hungry applications on their mobile devices. Data traffic is growing due to a combination of increasing market share of data-centric portable devices such as iPhone® and Blackberry® devices, lower wireless data subscription costs, higher wireless data throughput, and easier mobile access to data-intensive applications and rich content, such as, video. These trends are driving ever-increasing demands for wireless data communications.
Exacerbating the problem of managing this ever-increasing demand for wireless communications services is that a large percentage of wireless traffic within urban centers is managed by a small percentage of the cell sites. As a result, radio access network (RAN) congestion causes degradation in the quality of service for mobile data customers. RAN congestion is a well known problem, however, the correlation of cell site congestion to customers that are actively on those cell sites and their corresponding service plans is not. In particular, while network operators are employing intelligent probe-based solutions, such as those from Kapsch CarrierCom and Netscout, to help understand the overall status of cell sites, including when and where congestion occurs, no mechanism exists to correlate this congestion information from RAN probes into intelligent policy decision and enforcement points in the core wireless network.
What is therefore needed are systems and methods for network congestion management using radio access network congestion indicators measured by RAN probes that are applied within intelligent policy controllers that can then regulate the network resources used by users to better manage service quality.